Bruce Lee's old home that's now a 'love hotel' under threat of reconstruction
London, August 28 : Late kung fu star Bruce Lee's fans are reportedly battling to
save his old home from reconstruction.
The two-floor building at Hong Kong's Kowloon Tong district, which was Lee's home
during the last few months of his life in 1973, is presently a "love hotel" where rooms
can be rented by the hour to amorous couples.
The 5,000 sq ft Romance Hotel does not have any sign outside it to indicate the 'Enter
the Dragon' star ever owned it.
It boasts a warren of thin corridors is decorated with aged posters of semi-naked
women, and small rooms decorated with small sinks and brown bedcovers.
These days, however, the building has become a battleground between its 86-year-old
owner Yu Panglin, Lee' fans, and the Hong Kong government.
Panglin, who bought the house 30 years ago for 850,000 HK dollars, claims that the
present worth of the property is 100 million HK dollars.
After an enormous earthquake hit Sichuan in May, Yu decided to sell the building along
with three surrounding plots, and announced that he would donate some of the money thus
raised to the rebuilding of the region.
The Hong Kong Bruce Lee Club quickly intervened to stop him, and set up a page on the
social networking site Facebook to marshal opposition to the plan and to turn the house
into a museum.
Lee's widow Linda Lee Caldwell, and daughter Shannon are said to be ready to donate
personal items to a new museum.
Fan club's chairman Wong Yiukeung said that little effort had been made to commemorate
Lee despite the fact that a tourism boost could be beneficial for the island.
"Lots of tourists want to visit the house. I have to tell them to get a partner of the
opposite sex in order to get in," the Telegraph quoted him as saying.
The film star's younger brother Robert Lee has also stepped into the fray.
"My family finds it regretful that the Hong Kong government has not done much for my
brother. I urge them to buy the residence and convert it into a museum," he wrote in a
letter to Donald Tsang, the chief administrator of Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, the government is said to have ruled out spending public money on the
building.
Yu is said to have agreed to donate the building after his failure to sell it, or swap
it for government property elsewhere.
He, however, insists that he will allow the house to be turned into a museum only if
the government allows him to hugely expand the site into a 30,000 sq ft retail outlet, an
idea which has not met with enthusiasm.
"The building is a residence of a simple style without unique architectural claims.
Houses like this are very common," said the Antiquities and Monuments Office, adding that
expanding the site would destroy the cultural value of the house.
Lee's fans have been exasperated by the deadlock.
--ANI
